British Army Tank crews are to have their personal firepower boosted with the introduction of a brand new model of the SA-80A2 assault rifle.

The MoD has placed a Â£1 million contract with Heckler and Koch to convert 1,400 standard weapons into a new, shorter, âcarbineâ design. Currently the four-man crew of a Challenger 2 tank is equipped with a combination of SA-80 rifles and Browning 9mm pistols. The new SA-80 carbine will replace both weapons when it enters service in 2005.

Dismounted Close Combat Team Leader, Colonel Simon Deakin said: âThis new rifle is a radical re-design of the SA-80.

The barrel has been shortened by almost a foot â to half of its original length â a new 20-round magazine has been developed and a forward hand grip replaces the hand guard, making it lighter and easier to store and manoeuvre from inside the tight confines of a tank.

Click to expand...

OK, so the unit cost of a converted L85A2 is around 1000 pounds (total cost - original rifle + mod [if anyone's got a more accurate figure, please post it or PM me]). This mod costs 715 pounds per rifle. Therefore total unit cost of an L85A2 carbine is around 1715 pounds. WTF??? There are all sorts of off-the-shelf carbines that cost less than this - hell, they could have had SIG 551/552s at Dutch commercial civvy prices (i.e. heavily inflated - govt sales from the manufacturer are far cheaper) for 1540 pounds per unit, or M4 type carbines for around 550!

In addition - if the barrel is shortened by around a foot to about 1/2 its original length, it'll be about 10 inches long. This must balance abysmally (hell, the full length one is bad), and I would not like to fire it with, let alone without hearing protection (I've fired a SIG 552 which has about the same length of barrel in a conventional layout & it was very noisy, with a terriffic muzzle blast. It was also so short that I was cramped when firing it - a bullpup with a barrel this short will be almost unuseable, and the muzzle climb will be disasterous!)

And a "new 20rd magazine has been developped" - what about the Colt/Armalite 20 rounders? They work great, and cost 4/5 of sod all.

From the pictures it looks like a ridiculous waste of money - a few inches lopped off the front, making it even more unbalanced whilst hardly saving any weight or bulk. Looks dangerous (to the user) as well - I bet someone eventually shoots their own finger off....

OK, so the unit cost of a converted L85A2 is around 1000 pounds (total cost - original rifle + mod [if anyone's got a more accurate figure, please post it or PM me]). This mod costs 715 pounds per rifle. Therefore total unit cost of an L85A2 carbine is around 1715 pounds.

Click to expand...

The original cost of the rifle is a sunk cost. Nobody can do anything that will bring that cash back. Therefore, it is not a decision-relevant cost.

Apart from the cost of the conversion, other decision-relevant costs are any extra costs of training on a new weapon and technical support for it. I don't know what these are, but I doubt if they are negligible.

The original cost of the rifle is a sunk cost. Nobody can do anything that will bring that cash back. Therefore, it is not a decision-relevant cost.

Apart from the cost of the conversion, other decision-relevant costs are any extra costs of training on a new weapon and technical support for it. I don't know what these are, but I doubt if they are negligible.

Click to expand...

Not being a tanky, it probably isn't right for me to comment, but I will I'd agree with Vasco, that the original conversion costs have already been used and it's much better to equip troops with a firearm they are familiar with. That's the reason why US SWAT teams often go for the same configuration M16/M4 layout and there was a 16 or 4 built to use AK74 mags.

Now if the Armed Forces had sense and dumped the SA80 series, then you acquire the weapon system of choice. As that won't be until about 2015, we're stuck with it. If we need a carbine then it should be one with which the troops are already familiar.

Imagine the outcry if tank crews got C8 Diemarco's and the PBI retained the A2?

I think that this would have been a perfect chance to try out a new system, given that it's only 1400 units. Even if you just factor in the A2 mod and then the carbine mod, that's still around 1175 per unit (92M for 200k mods, 1M for 1400 mods). You can buy all sorts of gucci kit off the shelf for that money - even if you factor in training, parts, spares etc you could get better rifles for less money.

Scaleyback's right though - if the tankies got gucci C8s then the PBI would be seriously jelous, and might start to doubt the propaganda that the L85A2 is the best rifle in the world

It might be a good enough weapon out to say 200m or so. Yes they could have bought purpose built carbines more cheaply but if you add in all the extra spare parts and new training the cost might have been much higher.
My concern is that even with a foot taken off the barrel it might still be too long for the CR2 commander and gunner to keep it anywhere to hand in the turret. 9mm is pretty useless but at least its permanently attached to you in a holster. Sure, you can dig carbine out of a turret bin when you need to go on stag, for an o-group or a poo etc. But in a "real" situation if the tank is on fire and you need skidaddle then I expect it will be left behind.
The acid test of this weapon will be if the cav ever deploy to NI or Iraq armed with them. I doubt it.